Library & Research Tutorials

Information sources are considered scholarly or academic if they are written by experts (also known as scholars). The experts may be an individual author, a group of authors, or a group which is considered an authority (like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a department of the  US Government.)

Not sure?  If you are unsure whether your source is scholarly, ask a librarian or your instructor. We'll help you decide, and teach you about how we make those complex decisions too.

The most common types of scholarly sources are:

• Scholarly books (like scholarly encyclopedias of music, history, psychology, medicine, etc.)
• Scholarly articles (published in scholarly journals, also called academic journals)

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